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What's Next for Blizzard Social - BlizzCon 2017 Panel Recap

The panel has concluded in seeing what's next for Blizzard Social including the newest tools that help connect players! Today's Social panel saw the following members from the Battle.net team sharing what's next and answering questions from the audience.

• Andy Simmonds, Group Program Manager
• Itay Eshet, Lead Program Manager
• Mike Yaklin, Lead UX Designer
• Renate Ponte, Program Manager
• Nathan Lyons-Smith, Group Program Manager

Blizzard Social - What's Next Recap

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History

• Battle.net started in 1996.
• In 2014, a small feature was released called "Suggested Friends". With it, for Battle.net users, the amount of friends doubled.
• Some statistics of Battle.net: 1000+ servers, 4 data centers. 4.3 Petabytes of Data per day. 35 million messages per day.
• Despite a long history of social settings in Battle.net, there're still users who don't have people to play with.
• The mission of Social: Connecting players.

Blizzard Profiles

• Previously, upon receiving a friend request, you're unable to know more about the user.
• Blizzard Profiles is implemented to solve this problem by having the ability to show a person's profile. This profile includes the favorite games of the person, an "abouts page", other games that the user plays, and external links to other websites.
• When you see your own profile, you'll see a pencil icon that allows you to edit your profile, and also a profile visibility, where you can toggle who can see your profile and links.
• Avatars! Many different avatars are available for you to select from to personalize your profile.
• There are no plans for players to personally upload their own avatars for use.
• There are no plans for players to be able to communicate with the friend requester.
• They are considering earning avatars by achievements in-game.

Blizzard Groups

• "Once you make these friends, we want to make it easier for you to connect to them" - Mike Yaklin
• The solution: Blizzard Groups. They have been out for a while, and it allows players to stay connected to each other across games.
• Inside Blizzard Groups, you are able to send a message of the day, create channels, text chat and voice chat.
• For text chats, chat logs are there to ensure that your messages are archived.
• With Blizzard Groups, it eliminates the need for you to re-invite the same people in Battle.net to group up together.
• Blizzard Groups are not just for friends, but it allows for the creation of groups that have a specific purpose (such as WoW raiding)
• The Blizzard Groups can be found under the "Social" tab, along with your chats with friends.

Mobile Application

• Features of Mobile App - You're able to see what your friends are playing on your mobile.
• You're also able to chat with your friends who are in-game as well on your mobile.
• Also, you're able to add new friends on-the-go. This can be done by scanning a user's QR code on the person's mobile, thus allowing for a quick way to add friends.

Gifting Experience

• In the past, gifting was clunky in Battle.net. the gifting experience was improved such that gifting a gift is much easier.
• First, select the item that you want to gift in Battle.net, then select the gift recipient. Add a gift message, simply checkout and you're good!
• While gifting to others is made simple, the team wanted to make sure that receiving gifts is as easy as well.
• A gift icon at the top-right of the Battle.net interface notifies players when a gift is sent directly to them.
• A key part of gifting is in selecting gifts to send to your friends. With the release of the Gifting experience, HS card packs and loot boxes can be given to others.
• Just for Blizzcon users and virtual ticket holders, the HoTS team has given a 3-day Stimpacks to their gifts for them to battle it out!

Others

• The final new feature unveiled: Appear Offline. It is now available for people to use in order to display how social they want to be.
• The team is looking at global regions, but are facing difficulties in doing so.

Q&A

• Q: "What's coming up next for Groups?"
• A: "We want to make sure that admins are able to administrate the groups that they have, and more options to customize the Groups more in order to make it more unique for your friends. We also want to make it more integrated."
• Q: "Are you able to turn off real ID in-game?"
• A: "Streamer mode in-game, is not out there yet, but it's something that we're looking into."
• Q: "In the Games Tab, you can see the games that you don't own as well. Is there any plans to remove it?"
• A: "We haven't seen a reason to trim it down yet, and we want it to be in a click away. With more games, we will consider the option, but right now, it sits in there pretty easily. You can sort your games still."
• Q: "How do you get your start in Battle.net, and what are the evolutions ."
• A: Renata - "I started in Blizzard as a Game Master. I was very interested in project management, and I got an assignment to develop for the Account Management site. I went out there and got some certification and get myself more educated in this field. When the opportunity came for me to be a part of the mobile team when it was small, I jumped in. It's been a long time coming!"
• Q: "How do you decide what you're going to work on next in terms of new features?"
• A: "That's the hardest part of the job. We have to look at the battle.net platform as something that needs to evolve with the games so that people get a sense of what's going. In the panel, there's a pent-up need for these social needs, and make a particular effort around that. For example, in Gifting, what are the things that people want to do with each other - we tend to look things in a theme point-of-view and we start looking at what people are asking for. It makes it exciting, because we argue over what to include."

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